kamala harris interview: In first sit-down interview of presidential campaign, Kamala Harris says voters ready for ‘new way forward’

Vice President Kamala Harris said Thursday that voters were ready for “a new way forward” as she was questioned alongside her running mate, the Minnesota governor. Tim Walzin his first major television interview of his presidential campaign.

“First and foremost, one of my highest priorities is to do everything we can to strengthen and support the middle class,” he said. “When I look at the aspirations, the goals, and the ambitions of the American people, I believe people are ready for a new path forward.”

The interview with CNN’s Dana Bash gives Harris a chance to quell criticism that she has shunned uncontrolled environments, while also giving her a new platform to define her campaign and test her political mettle ahead of an upcoming debate with the former president. Donald Trump scheduled for Sept. 10. But it also carries risks as his team tries to build on the momentum of ticket restructuring after Joe BidenTrump’s departure and last week’s Democratic National Convention.

The CNN interview was recorded at 1:45 p.m. at Kim’s Café, a local black-owned restaurant in Savannah, Georgia, and aired Thursday night.

Harris was asked about changes in her policies over the years, specifically her shifts in stance on fracking and decriminalizing illegal border crossings.

“I think the most important and most significant aspect of my political outlook and decisions is that my values ​​have not changed,” Harris responded. Harris also downplayed Trump’s questioning of her racial identity after the former president said she “turned out to be black.” Harris, who is of black and South Asian descent, said it was “the same old, tired strategy.” She also said she would name a Republican to serve in her Cabinet if elected, though she did not have a name in mind.

Joint interviews during an election year are common in politics: Biden and Harris, Trump and Mike Pence, Barack Obama and Biden all did so at a similar point in the race. The difference is that the other candidates had also given solo interviews. Harris has yet to give an in-depth interview since becoming her party’s standard-bearer five weeks ago, though she did give several while still Biden’s running mate.

Harris and Walz are still introducing themselves to voters, unlike Trump and Biden, of whom people had near-universal knowledge and opinion.

They were in the middle of a two-day bus tour of southeastern Georgia that culminated with an evening rally in Savannah. Harris campaign officials believe that to win the state against Trump in November, she must make inroads into GOP strongholds across the state.

According to a Gallup poll, Democrats’ enthusiasm for voting in November has increased in recent months. About 8 in 10 Democrats now say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting, compared with 55% in March.

That gives them an enthusiasm they didn’t have earlier this year. Republicans’ enthusiasm has risen much less over the same period, with about two-thirds of them now saying they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting.

But on Thursday, in a packed stadium, Harris cast her nascent campaign as the underdog and encouraged the crowd to work hard to elect her in November.

“We are here to tell the truth and one of the things we know is that this will be a close race to the end,” he said.

Harris ran through a list of Democratic concerns: that Trump will further restrict women’s rights after appointing three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe, that he would repeal the Affordable Care Act and that, given the new immunity powers granted to presidents by the U.S. Supreme Court, “imagine Donald Trump without guardrails.”

Their rally was briefly interrupted by demonstrators protesting US involvement in the war between Israel and Hamas.

During her time as vice president, Harris has given on-camera and print interviews to The Associated Press and many other outlets at a much more frequent rate than the president, with the exception of Biden’s media blitz in the late stages of his disastrous debate performance that triggered the end of his campaign.

Harris’ lack of media access over the past month has become a key Republican attack point. Trump’s campaign has kept track of how many days she has spent as a candidate without giving an interview and has suggested she needs a “nanny” and that’s why Walz will be there.

“I just watched Comrade Kamala Harris’ response to a very weakly worded question, a question that was asked more as a matter of defense than curiosity, but her response rambled incoherently and stated that her ‘values ​​have not changed,'” Trump posted online.

Trump has relied heavily on conservative media outlets for interviews, though he has held more open news conferences in recent weeks as he seeks to regain the attention he gained from Harris’s promotion.

After the CNN interview, Walz left for other political events outside the state and Harris continued on to Georgia, stopping at Dottie’s Market in Savannah on Thursday, chatting with the owner’s mother as the crowd watched from the street, where she told voters she would be implementing “basically a startup tax credit, for small businesses that are just starting out.”

“This is one of my singular priorities: investing in and growing our small businesses,” he said.

She also met with volunteers. On Wednesday, Harris and Walz spent time with a high school marching band to the delight of students and visited a Savannah barbecue restaurant.

The campaign wants the events to engage voters in Republican-leaning areas that traditionally don’t see the candidates, and hopes the interactions will create viral moments that cut through the cluttered media coverage to reach voters across the country.

Harris has another intense campaign on Labor Day with Biden in Detroit and Pittsburgh as the election quickly approaches. The first mail-in ballots will be sent to voters in just two weeks.